Monday morning, Beth Pinsker of Reuters wrote an interesting piece about how legalized same-sex “marriage” has changed the tax status for the Americans who are now involved in that type of relationship.
Remember how the LGBT activists told us how unfair it was that same-sex couples couldn’t enjoy all of the benefits of marriage, like filing joint tax returns? It was all about “equality” between biblically married couples and homosexuals, right?
Well, according to Pinsker’s article, not so much:
This year will be the first time that those couples—and others who delayed marriage until the landmark court ruling—get to experience the joy of “married, filing jointly.”
But not everyone is so thrilled.
Joe Hollar, a 43-year-old who lives in Florida, got married in March 2015 and is just now assessing his new tax situation. So far, it does not look so good.
“I am really naive because I did not know it was so complicated,” he said.
Hollar, according to Pinsker’s report, has always itemized his deductions and used an accountant to prepare his taxes. His “spouse” had a tax advantage by taking the standard deduction and doing his own taxes.
“It’s not in his best interest to itemize, but I can’t go any other way, I’ll owe a fortune,” Hollar told Pinsker.
Granted, it costs them less to file their returns, in general, but they now get to face the infamous “marriage penalty.” In this case, Pinsker spoke with a Certified Financial Planner from Georgia who got “married” in celebration of the Supreme Court decision last summer:
Running projections for her taxes this year with her wife has been an eye-opener. “The thing that surprises a lot of people is that they fall into a higher tax bracket,” she said.
They will go from receiving a refund of several thousand dollars when they filed individually to owing money this year, filing jointly. Because Berger is an independent contractor, she did not adjust her quarterly estimated tax payments enough after the wedding to account for the change brought on by adding in her wife’s income.
But this was all documented, repeatedly, by those of us who were suspicious of the “equality” argument made by the LGBT activists. Documented well before the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
That’s because this has never been about “equality,” but rather the continued tearing down of our nation’s culture to advance an ideology that is completely incompatible with Christianity. Rather than provide fairness, they’ve always been seeking special treatment whereby they could further weaponize government to attack Christians who adhere to a biblical definition of marriage.
It’s just in this case—a momentary lapse of honesty from the “lamestream media” akin to the broken clock that is right for two minutes of the day—the hypocrisy of their “equality” argument has been exposed.
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